


see me now

by seventhswan



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: F/F, Female POV, Internalized Misogyny, Sexism, team science girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Hey, it’s Science Barbie!” some guy in a baseball cap and a tank called, loud enough to carry over the excited hum of three hundred little girls packed into the auditorium.</p>
</blockquote><p>[Ten moments in the life of Honey Lemon]</p>
            </blockquote>





	see me now

**Author's Note:**

> I realise there’s an issue with names here as Honey would only have been given her nickname after she got to college, but as there hasn’t been an official name revealed for her by Disney she’s Honey the entire way through this.
> 
> WARNINGS: Sexual harassment (verbal), misogyny, internalized misogyny, (brief) homophobia. I didn’t put an archive warning for major character death because Tadashi’s death is both canon and not dwelled on or re-enacted in any way in this. It is only mentioned once, in passing. 
> 
> Please feel free to point out any mistakes in this - I've only seen the movie once and this was unbetaed in order to be posted before Valentine's Day.

**i.**

It was March of Honey’s senior year of high school before she realised that she’d just have to put up with the boys ignoring her during physics group projects. She’d tried everything – being nice, being forceful, talking louder. She tried being right, first, of course, but that didn’t work either.

Her mama always taught her to rely on herself, so it took a lot to go to Mr Hathaway just before Christmas and say aloud into the still classroom that she was having a little trouble with group work. Her voice shook, so she drew up her best smile to disguise it. Her bracelets jangled when she gripped her hands together to stop the shaking.

“I’ve noticed the same thing,” Mr Hathaway said. There was a concerned crease in his forehead, and Honey immediately felt relieved. She’d done the right thing – Mr Hathaway was white-haired and kindly, and ruled the classroom with calm authority. The kids respected him. He’d fix this.

“And you know,” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial as though he was telling her, and only her, the secret key to the universe, “there’s an easy way to help matters. I really think the boys would make fun of you less and take you more seriously if you dressed more like the other girls in the class.”

There were two other girls taking physics. Sara wore ratty jeans and sneakers, and t-shirts with the names of bands on them whose music Honey had never heard. Her eyes always flicked over Honey with a mixture of disinterest and derision. Aisha, on the other hand, dressed like every day was a funeral, and constantly stared down at her shoes. Honey had never heard her speak.

Honey swallowed against a throat that felt suddenly, inexplicably tight. Which was silly, because she’d spent evenings in her room fretting over what to do about the boys, and here was a perfectly good solution. Mr Hathaway was always right.

“I see,” she said, and then she went home and emptied her wardrobe, searching for the muted t-shirts she’d received for past birthdays, and the loose jeans she usually wore when she went hiking with her uncle and cousins. They had a grass stain on the behind from the last time they’d been worn, but maybe that would help.

Sara curled her lip at Honey’s appearance in class the next day, her grey eyes travelling from Honey’s hair, scraped back with an elastic band, all the way to the faded tennis shoes Honey had borrowed from her mama. She laughed – not loud enough for anyone but Honey to hear - and turned back to her court of boys. Honey reached for her wrist, to twist the bangles she normally stacked there and played with when she was nervous, but there was nothing there today but a spare rubber band. Honey snapped it so it twinged her skin, and sat down at her desk ramrod straight, her head held high.

The disguise didn’t work, the boys still rolled their eyes when she spoke. Honey wasn’t sure what was wrong with her – whether it was because she was too blonde, too tall, too bambi-kneed, too loud, too Latina that she couldn't fade into the background, pass like Sara did. Honey just fit ill in this borrowed skin.

It was some weeks later, when Mr Hathaway was having a rare off day, and delivering an endless, boring lecture on the minutiae of string theory, that Aisha whispered, "I kind of miss your ruffles and polka dots."

Honey glanced at her, startled at hearing her speak, and Aisha’s face was immediately overtaken by a fierce blush.

“Me too,” Honey murmured, when Mr Hathaway turned away to write up an equation.

So she came to school the next day dressed as a pastel nightmare, and when she saw Sara’s smirk, she felt like she could breathe again. The boys still gave each other significant looks at the sight of her platform sandals, but it didn’t matter any more, somehow. They couldn’t stop her from walking. 

**ii.**

Honey met Tadashi first. It was lunchtime of her first day on campus and he slid his tray next to hers in line for food. Sometimes, Honey supposed, things were just like that – charmed.

“You’re in my stats class, right?” he said, a smile of recognition curling the corner of his mouth. Tadashi had this way of speaking to people – even people he’d only just met – like they shared a secret. It was the way his head tilted, maybe, or the way his mouth shaped the words, like they were precious things.

“Oh – yes,” Honey said, and tucked a hank of hair behind her ear, her bracelets jangling. She’d put on more than usual this morning for moral support.

“Thank God,” Tadashi sighed, slumping. “Do _you_ have any idea what the prof was talking about up there?”

Honey hesitated, fingers curled around her apple. She wasn’t sure if Tadashi was genuinely asking for her help, or if this was just one of those bonding things, where she was supposed to say _oh man, I know, right?_ and giggle, and touch his arm.

Tadashi was wearing a baseball cap, but he didn’t look like the boys in her physics class had. He looked – warm. Safe. He looked at her like he was really listening. So Honey took a breath and made a guess.

“Um, yes? I think so? It’s just like this, you –“

But Tadashi held up a hand to stop her.

“Wait, wait,” he said, and Honey’s heart sank. Her shoulders were already drawing in on themselves when Tadashi spoke again.

“Let’s grab this food and sit down so I can get a pen and some paper in your hands. I’ll need you to go kind of slow for me though, you can do that, right?”

Honey beamed and beamed.

**iii.**

Honey wasn’t really surprised to find that she wasn’t Tadashi’s first friend on campus. Tadashi was like a magnet, or the sun – people trailed in his wake, wanting to be close without even really understanding why.

So Honey tried to trust him when he introduced her to GoGo. He’d said before how much he thought they’d get along, and Honey’s heart had given a little jump at the idea of actually meeting a girl like her – a girl who liked science _and_ pink things and mani-pedis. Honey’s imagination had run off with her, she’d got a fair way into a daydream where she and GoGo were best friends, and Honey finally had someone to help her with that tricky waterfall braid thing she wanted to try, and they screeched together on the couch over unjust boots on Project Runway, and sang along to the same music while they did their homework together on Honey’s bedroom floor.

She hadn’t realised that GoGo would basically be Sara 2.0.

“Hey,” GoGo said, and held out her hand to Honey, bare-knuckle-gloved. Her fingernails were black, bitten short. Honey realised with a start that GoGo wasn’t even Sara 2.0 – she was the girl Sara _wished_ she could be, the girl Sara was in her wildest dreams.

GoGo’s hand was warm and surprisingly small.

“Hi,” Honey said, and tried not to sound miserable. She wondered if GoGo would hate her to the extent that Tadashi would stop being her friend, too.

**iv.**

When they added Fred and Wasabi to the group Honey was relieved – the more people that were around, the better she could try and fade in a little bit. The more bodies there were between her and GoGo, the longer she could make this last.

She realised the problem with her first disguise, back in high school, was that the change was too dramatic. This time, she started small - just wore a more neutral shade of lipstick, a three-inch heel instead of a four, a shirt in a dark jade green instead of a sweet mint.

“Listen, Honey, are you sick?” Tadashi asked, a couple weeks into the transformation. Their heads were bent together over 3.0 of Baymax’s code, and Tadashi’s nose was scrunched in consternation.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Honey said, laughing a little, too high. “What do you mean?”

Tadashi shrugged, clicking around in the code and frowning.

“I don’t know, you’ve just seemed a little… Off lately,” he said. “Not yourself. I didn’t actually notice anything until GoGo pointed it out, and then I thought, yeah, she does seem a little…”

He shrugged.

“I’m fine,” Honey said, guilt-stricken. “Don’t worry about me.”

“You know if there _is_ something, you can always tell us, right?” he asked. Honey turned her face away, just a fraction, to avoid being caught by those earnest dark eyes.

“I mean, depending on what it is, you might want to go to GoGo first, but…” he said, and then Honey snorted, and rolled her eyes, and gave him a little shove that made him grin.

**v.**

Honey actually liked being in the lab with GoGo, because her focused intensity made Honey work harder, longer, just to keep up. And they didn’t have to talk, and GoGo tuned the radio to a classic rock station, the kind of thing Honey and her mama used to listen to on long drives when Honey was young. It was like they were the kind of friends who were close enough to not mind silence.

Honey was on a break, brewing herself a cup of tea and watching GoGo work when she realised that GoGo consistently kept stopping to rake her hair back with her hand. Honey felt in the pocket of her lab coat for a grip and then hesitated, lip between her teeth.

“Here, let me,” she said eventually, stepping up to GoGo’s side and gesturing toward her hair. GoGo looked at the grip in Honey’s hand and shook her head.

“I mean, thanks and all Honey, but that won’t work,” she said, sighing. “I just need a haircut. My bangs are all different lengths, it’ll fall back out.”

“No, I can,” Honey said, and in lieu of explanation, just tapped GoGo’s chin to get her to lift her head a little. It was so strange, GoGo kneeling at her feet, looking up, waiting. Honey was almost bent in two to reach her.

She pulled GoGo’s bangs back into a mini French braid, tight to the scalp. This close, she could feel GoGo’s breaths. Honey hummed a little, lost in her work, remembering being taught how to do this years ago, practicing on her nieces. She tucked the shorter pieces in as carefully as she could and then smiled, serene, when she was done.

“There,” she said, stepping back, breaking the spell. “It might not last all day, but it should help a little.”

GoGo reached a hand up to feel Honey’s work with her fingertips, and smiled.

“Hey,” she said, voice soft, eyes round, “Honey, thanks.”

**vi.**

Her mama worked Tuesday nights, and Honey was so used to it that she had a whole routine. She queued up everything she’d DVR-ed off of Discovery during the week and blended together an acacia and avocado face mask. She kind of looked forward to it, honestly.

When the doorbell rang she assumed it was the pizza, and the pizza boy had seen her in so many terrible states over the years that she didn’t bother to wipe her face or shuck the towel off her wet hair. 

Of course, it wasn’t the pizza boy. It was GoGo standing on her porch, looking entirely awkward with a paper bag in her arms.

“Oops, sorry if I interrupted –“ she said after a long beat of confusion, once she took in Honey’s towel and avocado blend. Honey was kind of grateful for the mask, honestly, because her face felt like it was on fire.

“Um, no, of course not, come in,” Honey rambled, throwing the door open and managing to smack her hand off the wall in the process. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she held in her yelp.

Once inside, GoGo stood in the hallway looking ill at ease, peering at the hanging photographs of Honey and her mama. One of the things Honey liked about GoGo was the fact that, off her bike, she was actually kind of duck-footed. It broke her cooler-than-you, chipped nails, biker-girl shell a little.

She cleared her throat to buy time, so she wouldn't have to ask GoGo _what are you doing here?_ , because no matter what way she tried it in her head it sounded unbelievably rude. But Honey honestly couldn't guess.

“Well,” GoGo said, saving Honey any further agony, “I brought some cookies. I know you like pistachio, right?”

Honey did. They were her favorites.

“Yes!” she said, touched and taken aback all at once. GoGo looked at the ground, and then back at the photographs, and then at Honey's feet.

“And I figured, if you weren’t busy, you could show me how to do that thing you did with my bangs in the lab the other day. Because I mean, I know you don’t like me, but I –“

Honey blinked, feeling distinctly like she had been dumped into the middle of a conversation she hadn’t realised she was included in.

“I don’t not-like you,” she said. “I mean, I know you don’t like me, but I never –“

This time GoGo frowned, holding up a hand.

“No no no,” she said, punctuating it with shakes of her head, “I’ve wanted us to be friends ever since Tadashi introduced us, because…. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t have many girl friends, I’m always one of the guys. But every time I tried to get you, I don’t know, alone or whatever, you just –“

“I was trying to stay out of your way,” Honey said, but her voice was very small, because she suddenly felt dumb.

GoGo stared at her with a bewildered expression.

“ _Why_?” she asked, and all of a sudden Honey realised that she could not – could _not_ \- actually say the words _because you really remind me of a girl who hated me in high school_. It would sound beyond ridiculous. It _was_ beyond ridiculous, clearly. Honey felt like a moron.

So she just started to laugh. She laughed so hard and for so long that GoGo joined in, even though she wheezed that she had no idea why they were laughing.

They stayed up until four AM, stuffed full of pistachio cookies and pizza, pointing out inaccuracies in the Discovery docs. When Honey guiltily suggested they watch a marathon of Say Yes to the Dress around two, she was fully prepared for GoGo to snort and say _are you serious?_

Instead, she grinned and nudged Honey’s foot with her own, crowing, “ _yes_ , man, I love that show!”

Honey’s foot burned where GoGo had touched her.

**vii.**

The club was sweaty, heavy, but Wasabi was still in a sensible sweater. It made Honey smile and lean her head against his shoulder, impossibly fond. Her face felt elastic, like her smile could ping right off and ricochet around the room.

“I can’t believe we did this,” Wasabi sighed, hooking an arm around Honey’s waist.

“I can’t believe we got in,” Fred said, and Honey giggled. She wasn’t drunk, nowhere near, but she was loose and happy, giddy on the occasion as much as the two violently colored drinks she’d had.

“I told you we would,” Tadashi said, and smiled that smile, steady but still with that edge, the one that said when he was young he’d been the tree-climber, the kid who wrangled the others to go with him into places they were forbidden from. He’d come to the lab that afternoon determined that _this_ Friday they’d have a night like the movies, and now here they were.

“I’m going back to the bar,” GoGo said, pushing off from the side. She was all in black, her hair still in the French braid she now always wore in the lab. “Anyone want to come with?”

Honey disentangled herself from Wasabi.

The bar was busy to the point that even what had been up to now their go-to tactic (getting Honey – six two in her heels – to wave some money around over everyone else’s heads) didn’t work. 

“Bummer,” GoGo sighed, crossing her arms.

“What?” Honey yelled, and GoGo rolled her eyes and mouthed it again, slower, more exaggerated. The flashing lights illuminated her face in turns, white, blue, yellow. It was weirdly like they were underwater. Nice-weirdly.

“Need some help, sweetheart?” Honey heard, and then there was beery breath in the vicinity of her neck, and an off-puttingly clammy hand on her shoulder. She tried hard not to jump.

“Oh, no thank you, we’re just – we can wait,” Honey said, dragging up her best smile and trying to shrink a little, be less conspicuous. When she darted a glance at GoGo, her eyebrows were drawn down hard over her eyes, and her chin was jutting out the way it did before she said something particularly cutting.

“Well, I’ll keep ya company,” he slurred, and gave Honey’s shoulder a little – the only word for it was _feel_ \- before mercifully taking his hand away. It was silly, it was just her shoulder, and she was wearing a shirt and a cardigan, but it suddenly felt horribly bare, exposed. Like a nerve.

GoGo’s chin jutted out even further, if that was even possible. Honey tried to communicate to her wordlessly not to say anything – the guy was shorter than Honey, but he was jacked, and she didn’t think even Wasabi would be a physical match for him.

“So, you a model, doll?” he asked, his eyes raking over Honey slowly, just once, from the top of her blonde head to her pink toenails peeking out of her peeptoes. Honey couldn’t help swaying closer to GoGo, away from him.

“Oh no!” she said, her mouth opening wide in the smile her mama called her Julia Roberts smile – the one she didn’t mean. “I couldn’t –“

“She’s a scientist,” GoGo said, and even though she had to practically yell it, she looked as cool and unruffled as ever, she didn’t even uncross her arms or stand up straight from the louche lean she was doing against the bar. Honey felt a pang of envy.

“No way!” the guy hooted. “That’s funny, girlie. Okay, don’t give me no clues, I can guess. Makeup artist?”

“She’s really a scientist,” GoGo said, with absolutely no expression in her voice. Her face was stony.

“Well, I’m not really – I’m a college student,” Honey said, flustered.

“You’re a scientist,” GoGo said, all her attention suddenly focused on Honey, as if the guy had melted away. Honey gaped a little, off-balance in the glare of Gogo’s intense gaze. Her skin prickled all over, and time seemed to go all fudgy, slow.

“Well, you should get some pro shots taken,” the guy went on, undeterred. “Prettiest girl in here tonight by a mile, some agent would snap you up.”

Honey often wasn’t great with figuring out when men were hitting on her, but even she couldn’t misconstrue this. She attempted to cringe away from him without it being obvious what she was doing, and wrapped one arm around herself. She wondered if there was some way for her to signal to one of the boys that they needed to get over here and put their arm around her waist.

“Well, she’ll think about it, won’t you, sweetie?” GoGo said, and then she came over and took Honey’s hand, and Honey’s brain short-circuited.

“Listen, it’s been… great talking to you, but I think we’re gonna give up on this place,” GoGo said. She was rubbing her thumb back and forth over the back of Honey’s hand, and Honey felt funny. The guy looked utterly gobsmacked.

“Are you serious? Pretty girls like you? I’d’a never have thunk it,” he said, his eyes round as marbles. GoGo’s grip tightened, just a fraction, on Honey’s hand.

“I’d sure like to watch that,” he said, with a grin like a wolf. His teeth were huge. GoGo’s chin came back, more furious than ever, but it was Honey who spoke up. It was as though holding GoGo’s hand channelled some of GoGo’s attitude into her.

“Um, you know, it’s too bad, but you ah, totally couldn’t afford it,” she said, because she thought that was the kind of thing GoGo might say. Her intonation rose a little at the end like it was a question, but GoGo still grinned wickedly and towed her off, punching her in the arm with delight.

**viii.**

“That happens to you all the time, doesn’t it?” GoGo said, a couple days later when they were back in the lab. She kept bringing it up with this concerned pin-scratch frown between her eyebrows, when Honey did _not_ want to talk about it, or even think about it at all. The night of the bar… incident she’d had a very weird dream where she was married to GoGo and they were having Saturday-morning pancakes with their cat. A couple days later she had another, where they were saving the world from giant killer insects. She had no idea what it meant.

“It happens to you, too,” Honey said, not looking up. “And every other girl. Guys buy Cass coffee in her own café all the time. It’s just – that’s how it is.”

“Not like that,” Gogo said. Her grip was very strong on the wrench she was holding, and Honey feared she'd damage her hand if she squeezed any more. “It doesn’t happen to me like that.”

Honey tried not to flinch. She knew perfectly well why it happened to girls like her and not girls like GoGo – tough girls who could look out for themselves.

“The model thing, it’s just an easy thing for them to say,” she said, squinting harder at her solution than it really warranted, because she felt like she had to say something, and she couldn't look at GoGo's lovely, worried face. “Girl over six feet, it’s the go-to. I guess they feel original, like nobody’s ever said it to me before. Sometimes I guess they’re so pleased with themselves after that that they get a little” – she made a face – “determined.”

“It blows,” GoGo said suddenly, fiercely, and she set the beaker down so she could slide to rest against Honey’s side, down on the floor. Honey giggled when GoGo literally blew against her cheek, and GoGo grinned.

“There, you’re smiling again,” she said, and put the tip of her index finger into Honey’s left dimple. Honey was blindsided by the sudden urge to grab her hand, put their palms together, like the other night. “I was worried you were mad at me.”

“I’m not mad,” Honey said automatically.

“Well, I’m mad,” GoGo said, her mouth set, a firm line. “I’m mad at douchecanoes like that idiot, and I’m mad at the whole freaking system.”

When GoGo’s cheek landed against Honey’s shoulder, like that admission had taken all the fight out of her, Honey tentatively rested her own cheek against the crown of GoGo’s head. They fit perfectly, and Honey thought she could stay that way, if the universe let her.

**ix.**

Since Tadashi died, Honey had felt bizarrely like Hiro’s mom. It was stupid, because there were only a few years between them, really, but she didn’t feel like his elder sister, the way she maybe should. Hiro had cried on Honey’s shoulder more than anyone else’s, and he was just – he was so small, had been for so long. She felt like she wanted to wrap him up and tell him the storm would pass soon, if he just held on.

That was what made it so disturbing when GoGo said, apropos of nothing, just in the middle of some welding in Fred’s garage, “you realise Hiro has a crush on you, right?”

Honey dropped a beaker, which shattered.

“Oops, my bad,” GoGo smirked, as Honey fumbled with a broom, wanting to get it cleaned up before Heathcliffe noticed, “I guess you _didn’t_ realize.”

“That is the grossest! Thing! I’ve ever heard!” Honey exclaimed, punctuated by horrified wheezes. She shook her head hard, as if she could get rid of the images. Oh _madre de dios_ , the images. GoGo, the traitor, was laughing fit to burst.

“Honey, dude, he’s seventeen now! Calm down, it’s totally natural -!” she grinned, and Honey clamped her hands hard over her ears, humming loudly.

“Oh man, this is priceless –“ GoGo guffawed, and so Honey did what she had to do – she threw the broom at her.

“I don’t know what you’re laughing about!” Honey yelped, pointing wildly at her. “When it’s _you_ he’s got a crush on!”

GoGo immediately looked like a stranded goldfish. Her mouth flapped open and closed uselessly, and Honey couldn’t help but feel wickedly victorious.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” she said, all false sweetness, big doe eyes. GoGo growled a little, tossing the broom away.

“What are you _talking about_? He does _not_ ,” she said, fiercely, and then Honey actually felt sort of bad. Hiro’s crush on GoGo was visible from space, but she’d been tactfully not mentioning anything, because… Ew. Also she didn’t want to draw any attention to her _own_ colossal crush on GoGo that she’d been nursing for, oh, the last four years. Hiro’s tendency to walk into doors when he saw GoGo and drop things when she complimented him was adorably obvious, enough that Honey would have to literally get a lute and start serenading GoGo in the middle of training for anyone to notice her feelings.

“It’s totally you!” GoGo said, but she looked a little uncertain, less gleeful. “He gets all funny when he sees you, and remember when we went on that vacation last spring break and you wore that bathing suit and he tripped on the pool steps?”

Honey rolled her eyes for a long time, and with deep feeling.

“That was because of _you_ , because you wore that black thing. And he drops things when you say nice things to him!”

GoGo snorted derisively.

“It was _so you_ , Honey – and I can’t even blame him, that bikini was _scandalous_ ," she drew herself up to her full height, in preparation for landing what she obviously thought was the finishing blow. Honey waited. "And remember that time he let you put makeup on him just because you asked really nicely? He wouldn’t do that for anyone else.”

Oh, _please_!

“Well, you –“ Honey began, only to come crashing to a halt when GoGo held up a finger.

“Waaait a minute. We officially spend too much time together, do you realise that? Hiro only ever sees us together, and now we can’t even work out which one of us he has his big dumb teenage boy hots for,” she said, and Honey couldn’t help it. After a second, she spluttered a little hysterical giggle out of the side of her mouth.

“Are we co-dependent?” GoGo asked, making an exaggerated pained face like she was genuinely worried about it, and Honey rolled her eyes and threw a rag in her face. Before she could retaliate, the garage door opened.

“What’s going on down here?” Hiro asked. His jeans were already getting too short again, and he had a little smile on his face, just like Tadashi’s – the one Tadashi had worn in anticipation of being let in on a really good joke. Like he needed to laugh so much more than regular people that he liked to get started early, before he even knew what he was smiling about. Honey’s heart swelled with pure love and affection the way it always did when she looked at him.

“Nothing, kiddo,” GoGo said, and she went over to pull him – down, down, further down now than ever before, and Honey got a lump in her throat watching – into a noogie.

**x.**

Honey had started her science program for little girls just a year after she became a superhero. The San Fransokyan media hadn’t been slow in picking up their story, and within a few months Honey found herself confronted by a crowd of little girls at any events she attended for the city, some dressed in lab coats, or carrying dolls with her face. It was overwhelming, and humbling, and lovely, and she never had enough time to talk to them all, to hear about their inventions and their stargazing and the ‘chemical reactions’ they were making with shampoo and shaving foam.

So after she ran the idea past the rest of the team and none of them told her it was a terrible idea, she called up the San Fransokyan Museum of Natural History and asked whether they’d be able to give her space to run an event exclusively for little girls interested in science, once a month. They’d fallen over themselves to say yes – and that was still a strange experience. People caring about who she was. Having clout.

GoGo helped out, which was great, because it was an extra branch of science they could cover (and also, when Honey said she couldn’t go out there, she was going to throw up, GoGo squeezed her hand and told her she was going to kill it). And those afternoons were some of the best of Honey’s whole life – from the moment she stepped out on stage in her lab coat to give the welcome speech, to helping the kids make rockets that could really launch (GoGo judged the final race with a special brand of seriousness), to blushing while the parents thanked her, said _she’s been talking about coming to this for weeks!_

It wasn’t until the eighth event that there was any kind of problem. Honey got three words into her welcome speech when some – some guy, in a backwards baseball cap and a tank - hollered sloppily, “hey, look, it’s Science Barbie!”

He cupped his hands around his mouth so it would carry over the excited hum of three hundred little girls packed into the auditorium, and right up onto the stage. It was that, Honey would realise later, that really made her angry. He couldn’t even just mock her to his equally frat-bro friend, he had to disrupt _everything_ , upset the girls, who were now producing an uncertain hum of distress.

Honey’s hand faltered on her mic. There was a screech of feedback. All the contents of her flashcards deserted her. 

“Well, as I was saying,” she said, doing her best to be brave, clearing her throat. “I’m so super excited to see all you guys, and our schedule for today is going to –“

“Hey, do an experiment, Science Barbie!” the same guy hooted.

“Yeaaaah, I got something here you can make disappear –“ his friend agreed lewdly, his voice more slurred.

“Um, you do realise the difference between a scientist and a _magician_ , right?” GoGo yelled back, easily compensating for her lack of mic. There was a nervous titter of laughter from the parents.

“It’s fine, GoGo,” Honey said, mouth away from the mic. GoGo nodded tersely, her mouth tight, clearly uncertain.

“There’s nothing –“ she started, and then she swallowed. Her mouth was so dry. Three hundred shining little faces were gazing up at her, rapt. They had faith in her. 

“Listen girls, it isn’t always going to be easy,” she said. She wanted to close her eyes, to disappear, but instead she looked back at them, trying to meet the eye of every little girl in that crowd. “Sometimes, like today, people are going to say mean things to you, because you like science. Sometimes _boys_ are going to be mean.”

“Ew, _boys_ ,” one little girl muttered, and there was a little ripple of laughter. Honey smiled.

“But don’t let anybody tell you what you shouldn’t do,” she said. “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do science because you have long hair, or because you like unicorns, or because you own a Barbie doll. No matter who tells you that – even if it’s someone you really like, like a teacher or your aunt or the ice-cream man – they’re wrong. I want you to remember, if anyone tells you that, _Honey Lemon said I could_. You all can. Every little girl here _can_. You can be an astronaut or an engineer like GoGo or a physicist or a marine biologist, _and_ you can be a cheerleader, and a dancer, and bake awesome brownies. Don’t ever let anyone tell you who you are. You can be whoever you want. You can be as many things as you want. Nobody decides but you.”

It was like an out of body experience. Her ears were ringing, so she didn’t hear the raucous applause until it had obviously been going on for some time. There was a piercing whistling coming from her left, and when she looked over, GoGo’s eyes were wet. 

When she glanced back down into the auditorium, the two guys were gone. Security must have fetched them while she was talking. She was oddly disappointed - she would've liked to see their faces. She would have liked to ask them if there was anything else they wanted to say, now.

GoGo came and gently took the mic from her numb hand.

“Just give us two minutes, guys, and we’ll be right back,” she said, using her Professional Phone Voice, and then she marched Honey off stage, into the wings.

“My hands are shaking,” Honey whispered, because she couldn’t get her voice to go any louder. She felt shellshocked.

“I’ve never loved you more,” GoGo said, and that second, the look on her face, was something Honey would never forget. It was burned onto her frontal lobe, a snapshot that she could take out and linger over again and again.

GoGo got up on her tiptoes, and the ringing in Honey’s ears started again, her skin prickled, she was underwater – and it was perfect.


End file.
